It is time of the year when Project Management Institute (PMI) Hosts its annual Global Volunteer Leaders Summit. This year, the conference took place in Mexico City. Nearly 200 people from around the world gathered to make a difference to the project profession.
As an advisor to the organisation’s culture with a focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, I had the delight to join my fellow advisors and other insight teams and boards from Project Management Institute Education Foundation to the Board Advisory Council, the Academic Insights, the Chapters Insights team, the region mentors, and many more; 22 different groups.
If you want an example of an organisation that has a live strategy that does not stand still, look no further; PMI has you covered. PMI unveiled its new strategy phase called PMI NEXT.
In this post, I will share the highlights of the conference and my key takeaways.
This year’s theme was Embrace Curiosity. This is one of PMI’s 5 values, which was defined back in 2022/2023. PMI has been going through internal changes to become more effective and efficient. These changes are generally visible to all the Global Leaders, and hence, I believe the theme was chosen; a way to keep everyone open to what is coming next.
Throughout the conference, we had an update from the Board with a good Q&A session. This was aimed for everyone to get to know the Board better. The executive team shared with us what has been happening and introduced us to the strategy: PMI NEXT. We had various networking sessions, a workshop called GPS to Purpose introducing the concept, followed by a workshop to put this GPS into action as the various advisory groups supporting the strategy.
I always admire the visibility of the Board during these events. They host panel discussions and join the workshops that take place, and the celebration dinners. Before I share the GPS to Purpose concept, here is what PMI NEXT mean:
- Nurture our purpose and values
- Empower ourselves
- eXpand our thinking
- Tighten our focus
In essence, this is the message PMI wanted to deliver to all of its global leaders. From now on, we need to focus on the things that matter and make a difference. We will look for ways to be efficient and engage with activities that are effective and impactful. The CEO took the stage to present the strategy in one slide; which kudos to him is never an easy job; but he delivered, explained, and got his execs to share their focus areas. With that in mind, lets get to GPS to purpose.
Gifts, Passions and Service
GPS stands for gifts, passions and services to be of service to a purpose. A keynote speaker introduced the topic. If you are new to strategy design, then this is an excellent topic for you and your team. If you are not new to strategy design and implementation, then read on to GPS workshop which can help you implement a good team activity.
We maximise project success to elevate our world.
PMI’s Purpose (2024)
The concept is that teams would identify their gifts. These are their strongest assets that would help them contribute to a team and an organisation. The passions are what can be put into practice to help support an initiative. Which brings us to service, the final stage: where you combine your gifts and passions to deliver an outcome. This outcome can be individual or as a team.
GPS Workshop
If you would like to implement a team-building activity and nurture a safe space for your team, this is a good activity to have. It is good because it helps your team be more self aware, and encourage positive feedback to each other. You can use this concept to make a team building exercise, a pick up me exercise, or a motivational workshop. The activity includes self-work followed by group work, and it is divided into three sections.
1. What are your gifts?
Each individual lists their gifts or Power Skills. Once everyone finishes, get a faciliator or yourself as the leader of the team, to combine all of the gifts together and see if there are any commonality. There is no need to find commonality, but if there are, then treat them as your team’s super power.
2. What are your passions?
In this step, ask your team to list down what it is they enjoy the most, especially if there is a problem. If they would like to contribute to the success of the team or the organisation, how would they go about doing so? Once they are all complete, you also collate all the passions. This now leads you to the third part of the workshop.
3. How can your gifts and passions be used to maximise the teams’ success?
In this part, you ask your team to articulate how their gifts and passions can help a bigger goal. You also collate all of the answers, and you try and reach a consesus for one formula that represents that entire team.
If you are doing this activity for one team, then make sure you capture this statement and keep it visible for all memebers in the workspace. If you are doing it for more than one team, then let each team share theirs so everyone knows how they can support each other.
What I like about PMI conferences is the thoughtful planning that goes behind them to encourage people to network and grow. For example, for one of the sessions, we all walked into the conference room, and there was a big wall with envelops stuck to it and a massive sign that says: Embrace Curiosity, Pick a Card, Any Card. Each card has a challenge, and PMI encourages us to action this challange and shar eour learning if we wish to. My card says that I should try and mentor a younger professional to support them and learn from them as well. The card is absolutely brilliant, but I was a bit disappointed as I have been mentoring for around 7 years. So it is not a challenge for me. I took a sneak peek at my colleague’s challenge, which was to read a biography of someone and see what I could learn from them and implement in my own work. Now that is a challenge because I have not read a bio of someone before. Challenge Accepted!
The conference closed on a surprise activity, which is an energy pump for everyone. It was with a drummer band who without communicating with us verbally in the room, got all of us to use drums that were on our seats and we joined them in a rythem. It was powerful, enjoyable, and fun, and everyone got into the rhythm! And everyone left with drumming sticks (feature photo). This obviously does not give it justice, but we literally left buzzing!
All the dinner celebrations were Mexican-themed with some brilliant decorations. Apparently, the day of the dead (Día de Muertos) parade in Mexico city started only in 2015 after 007 movie was released. The film had created a massive touristic movement that the government decided to make the parade a reality and now tourists flock from everywhere (fact not checked).
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